A group of Tennessee’s four largest media organizations — The Tennessean, The Commercial Appeal, Knoxville News Sentinel and (Chattanooga) Times Free Press — filed public records requests with the state Department of Economic and Community Development and nearly 20 local industrial development boards throughout the state.

For all agencies, we sought key information on economic development deals: the amount of the subsidy, the company location, the number of jobs promised, the number of jobs actually created and other data.

At the state, we focused on the FastTrack grant program, which awarded roughly $105 million in fiscal 2017, and the Capital grants program, which provides a few select companies with multimillion-dollar grants for infrastructure and other expenses. At the local level, we requested information about property tax breaks called PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes.

The records ranged from handwritten reports to spreadsheets with hundreds of entries. After compiling all the information, we created an interactive database with the state data for grants awarded between 2011 and 2016. The local PILOT data, however, was too spotty to create a complete database.

Companies in the state’s grant programs generally have five years to create the promised jobs, so some companies that are short of their commitments still have time to make up the difference. Jobs figures are self-reported by the businesses to the state. For some companies that received multiple grants, the jobs figures may be duplicated among each grant’s records.

Grants were grouped into three categories: job training, infrastructure and various. All capital grants were categorized as infrastructure grants, although some have affiliated job training programs. The “various” grants pay for economic development costs ranging from moving expenses to building renovations.

The analysis excluded business tax credits because Tennessee keeps all tax information confidential.